Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse

Chapter 111: Chapter 111: The Abyss of the Lake Bottom

Xu Xin’s crossbow bolt didn’t kill the piranha; instead, it ended up dying under the mouths of its own kind.

These piranhas were probably very hungry due to their recent mutation, which led to such a situation. After Silver King completed its mutation, it ate an entire deer and still seemed unsatisfied.

This made Xu Xin even more determined to wipe them out. After a full meal, Silver King grew significantly larger the next day, and these fish couldn’t be allowed to keep growing!

The fact that these piranhas were so hungry they attacked their own kind worked in Xu Xin’s favor. He thought that to kill a large mutated piranha, it would take several crossbow bolts. Although he had gathered quite a few bolts along the underground trap path, he still wanted to conserve them if possible.

Another bolt shot out, and the same scene played out again. The other three fish immediately started frenziedly biting the injured, bleeding fish.

In just ten seconds, the second fish was reduced to a skeleton, with not even a trace of the previous fish’s flesh in its stomach left uneaten by the other three.

”So easy.” Xu Xin was happy, though it was a bit unfortunate that he couldn’t obtain materials from the piranhas, he himself was too cautious to enter that area, being eaten is just what happened.

After taking down one more piranha, Xu Xin shot the remaining two, letting them bite each other until the two piranhas, eaten to the bone, fell into the abyss at the bottom of the lake.

Thus, the piranhas in the lake’s center were completely dealt with.

The beast’s awakening removed a thorn that had stuck in his heart, Xu Xin felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

Next, he was going to explore the giant hole at the bottom of the lake.

He didn’t dare to swim directly downward, but first swam back to the shallow water area. After all, the piranhas’ activity area was at the lake center, directly above the abyssal hole. Looking directly down from the lake center, the bottomless, pitch-black abyss truly inspired fear, as he was always worried a giant beast might swim up from the deep and swallow him whole.

Reaching the edge where the hole suddenly deepened, he began to slowly dive down.

Xu Xin had done underwater diving before. While vacationing in the southernmost islands of his homeland, he experienced diving with a professional instructor, reaching depths of around ten meters. Prior to diving, he underwent about half an hour of basic training, and, coupled with some self-research, he understood well the impact of water pressure on the human body.

The pressure in deep water is extremely daunting, posing threats to various bodily organs.

During his descent, Xu Xin started assessing the pressure’s effect on him. When he experienced diving before, at a depth of three to four meters, his ears started to feel uncomfortable and he needed to equalize them. But this time, Xu Xin felt the same discomfort only after diving approximately seven to eight meters.

Using the learned method, he pinched his nose and blew, easing the discomfort in his ears.

Xu Xin began to calculate in his mind. Previously, at a depth of three to four meters during his diving experience, he began to feel uncomfortable, but now, not until about seven to eight meters did the sensation occur, indicating that the impact of water pressure was reduced due to his Scale Armor, allowing him to dive twice as deep.

Without diving equipment, a regular person could dive to a maximum depth of ten meters; trained professional divers could reach over fifteen meters, but that’s about it. Seventeen to eighteen meters is nearly the limit for most professional divers diving without gear.

Of course, the world record set by top adventurers is far higher, though he, as a complete outsider, can’t compare with professional divers, let alone world records.

He’s simply a regular person who has once experienced diving, understanding well that he lacks diving experience. Without gear, even though he can breathe underwater, a depth of a little over ten meters is probably his limit. With gear, he could attempt to explore depths around twenty meters.

Twenty meters is not shallow at all; the height of seven floors is only about twenty meters.

He would not venture deeper. Deep water is a treacherous domain; this giant hole is extremely dangerous, not even considering the possible underwater creatures, the pressure alone could kill him if he dives too deep; even if he manages to surface, the consequences would be severe.

He cherished his life and didn’t wish to court death.

However, the blue-grade resources on those cave walls were estimated to be around a depth of twenty meters, he could attempt to harvest them.

Diving to roughly fifteen meters, Xu Xin finally saw the blue-grade resources. They were strips of aquatic plants growing on the cave walls, swaying with the slow currents in the cave as three stalks of deep green water plants.

It seems that... he just ate the blue-grade aquatic plant! Who would have thought this kind of aquatic plant would grow on the cave walls twenty meters underwater.

Slowly swimming downward, Xu Xin eventually reached the blue-grade aquatic plants.

Indeed, they were aquatic plants (blue), which provide underwater breathing abilities—the blue-grade water plants he had purchased from Qin Yunlong!

”This water grass most likely only grows at this depth. I didn’t expect that Qin Yunlong and his brother could dive to a depth of twenty meters; they are truly professional diving instructors.” Xu Xin didn’t think they had the same purple-grade equipment as him; they probably relied entirely on their own abilities to dive.

...Or they possess some kind of special underwater ability.

Harvesting the water grass from the cave wall and storing it in his backpack, Xu Xin began to rotate along the cave wall at this depth. There were also some blue-grade water grasses growing on the cave walls, and he intended to collect all of them, as these were strategic resources.

Swimming along the cave wall, Xu Xin looked further into the depths of the cave. Directly facing the depths of this giant cave always gave him a creepy feeling. It made him profoundly understand the feeling that when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes back at you.

He always felt that something in the depths of the giant cave was staring at him.

Could it be that giant python, or something else entirely? Maybe it was just his imagination.

As he had already dived twenty meters, Xu Xin was much closer to those things, which were larger than him and were swimming back and forth in the depths of the giant cave. He could already vaguely see what they looked like.

They were a kind of fish, three to four meters in length, with very sharp mouths and protruding eyes, though their bodies were quite flat and looked a bit strange. The color of these fish was almost the same as the surrounding cave walls; if they weren’t swimming as they were now but instead were sticking to the cave walls, Xu Xin probably wouldn’t have been able to spot them.

Fortunately, the fish’s appearance wasn’t overly bizarre; they didn’t look like monsters, which allowed Xu Xin to feel slightly at ease.

Within his line of sight, he could see about four or five of these fish, all in waters below sixty meters, far from him, so he didn’t have to worry about them attacking him.

After circling the cave wall once, he received a total of eleven water plants within his depth range. Aside from the water grass, he didn’t find other blue-grade resources.

Even though there were still some blue lights deeper in the water, Xu Xin wouldn’t continue diving further. Those resources were mostly around thirty meters deep, a depth he simply couldn’t reach. If he truly went to such depths, and if anything happened, he might end up staying in this abyss forever.

However, at a depth of sixty meters, which was also the range where those strange fish were active, some stones on the cave wall caught his attention. The stones protruding from the cave wall glowed with a green light, and a few emitted blue light.

”Ore?” Xu Xin squinted his eyes, wanting to see those stones clearly.

The color of those stones was not the same as the cave wall; they had an overall green sheen, distributed abundantly on the cave wall at a depth of sixty meters.

”Green ore, what kind of ore is green? Copper ore?” Xu Xin wasn’t too knowledgeable in this area, so he felt a bit puzzled. Maybe it’s a kind of stone not found in the original world, just like the black gold discovered by Li Wenxi.

Most importantly, he currently couldn’t dive to such a depth, so thinking about it was futile. Even if it were copper ore capable of making electrical appliances, he couldn’t get to it.

Xu Xin decided to dive a little bit further down to see how deep he could go before feeling uncomfortable.

He only descended about four or five meters when Xu Xin began to feel noticeably uncomfortable, so he ceased his descent and started to float back up.

A depth of about twenty-five or twenty-six meters? Without considering the influence of the Scale Armor, he could dive to around twelve or thirteen meters, which hadn’t even reached the limit for ordinary people. And considering his body, which had been strengthened many times and could even breathe underwater, he felt that, with proper training, he should be able to dive to around forty meters.

Looks like he’ll need to seek advice from the Qin Yunlong brothers about diving experience.

With no other resources around, Xu Xin also planned to go back up, as the effect of the water grass he ate was about to wear off, and he needed to return to the surface quickly.

Xu Xin didn’t swim up quickly. If the water pressure changed too fast, at worst, it could cause decompression sickness; at worst, it could collapse the lungs and lead to death. Of course, at Xu Xin’s depth, it shouldn’t be that severe, but it could still potentially injure his eardrums, and he definitely didn’t want to go deaf.

He slowly floated upwards, and eventually, Xu Xin emerged from the water, returning to the shallows. When his feet touched solid ground, he let out a long sigh of relief.

Although the underwater world intrigued him, the giant cave gave him a very bad feeling. The immense water pressure made him afraid to go deeper or surface quickly, restricting his movement as if he were in a huge, deep cage.

Fortunately, this trip wasn’t without gain; at least he got eleven more water grasses, significantly boosting his underwater activity time. If the rainy season indeed brought floods, with this Scale Armor and these water grasses, he wouldn’t have any problems even if he were swept away by the flood.

Xu Xin also dug up some lotus roots in the shallows.

The fish might mutate, but these already mature lotus roots probably wouldn’t, right? The kitchen was ready, so he would go back and make lotus root fried with meat using beast oil.

He stepped onto the shore from the lake, glancing back at this seemingly beautiful yet perilous lake. The man-eating fish that once roamed the heart of the lake were now gone, and the lake seemed to have returned to the tranquil, beautiful state it was the first time he came to the lakeside.